Building our domestic church one day at a time

Too Much To Handle

I have learned over the past few weeks, that God indeed does give us things that are too much for us to handle. I feel as though it is His way of encouraging us to turn to him, to rely on Him, and to be aware that it is HE who ultimately is in charge of “handling” no matter what we think.

Two weeks ago, my best friend died. My beautiful shining light of a friend just suddenly passed away. Completely unexpected. She was 36 years old. We have our birthdays only one day apart.

For the past decade, I can’t clearly recall a day that I have not seen her, or at the very least, spoken to her. It is gutting to not have her here.

My eight year old said me through tears how unfair it was that she was in heaven and happy, and how she can see us, while we must be here and be so broken without her. I had no words of counsel. I had only my arms to wrap around her in my own pounding grief.

I have had many people tell me “God won’t give you what you can’t handle”, but I think that is not the case. I am not handling it well. I am holding on to the thread of hope that God will help me through.

When I walked into the final hospital (she had been transferred from her home to one place, then to the other), I felt my legs collapse. I literally felt my heart break. The air was stolen from me as I stared at my beautiful friend hooked up to the machines that were keeping her alive.

As I wept by her side, I was so engulfed in grief that I could not imagine walking away from this without her.
And as I walked into her home and held her mother, I questioned how to survive.

At one point I made the foolish prayer to ask God to use my grief to give comfort to another. I asked Him to be with them. Being foolish in my thinking I was “strong” I asked God to leave me and go to another.

And He did.

For more than 10 days, I felt no God. The presence that had been a part of me, the Spirit that guided me, all of Him was just gone.

Then I desperately begged for Him to return, and slowly, I started to again feel comfort. At times, I even have felt joy. It is strange feeling joy in this abyss of sadness. It feels like I am somehow betraying my friend. Which is crazy, because I know in my heart that she is in eternal joy.

So I move forward each day. I strive to be a better mother. I strive to be a better person. I hold onto the things that are good and true.

I am so grateful for a quote shared with me in a facebook group that I admin.

“Never lose sight in the darkness that which you saw so clearly in the light.”